


Mistress of Night

by Shadow_Maven



Category: Original Work
Genre: Exorcism, Gen, Horror, Psychological, demonpact, interiormonologue, streamofconsciousness, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21909349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Maven/pseuds/Shadow_Maven
Summary: A nun, a botched exorcism, and consequences...because there are always consequences...
Kudos: 1





	Mistress of Night

**Author's Note:**

> Original work, property of Antoinette McCormick, previously published in Blood Moon Rising Magazine's Issue #78 (October 2019)! An earlier version of this work also appears in a Wattpad anthology.

  
This was not supposed to happen.

Not like this. Not to me.

It wasn't supposed to have a soul.

_ My _ soul, to put a finer point on it. Things like that didn't have souls. They  _ couldn't _ have them: it wasn't allowed. Even Hell, the biggest free-for-all of all, was supposed to have  _ rules _ about these things. Specific rules, ironclad...

So, I'd always thought. So, I'd been told. But then, I'd been told lots of things. Too many things and most of them, I now realized, untrue. Demons, like ghosts, didn't follow the rules.

How stupid of me.

Stupid, because  _ I'd _ believed those rules, believed  _ in them _ enough at one time, but now, when all I had was time, fathoms of it, rippling before me like an illimitable ocean, wine dark and sky deep—

Time to think, to burn, to weep. Time to curse my own stupidity.

I'd believed in them, in Him,  _ Him _ most of all. But, when I needed Him most, had He believed in me? I could no longer feel His light in me.

I knew what the fly in the web must feel like, life force draining, bit by bit. Broken, and as with all broken things, soon discarded. A shattered crucifix, a broken rosary...

_ Oh, but I love broken things! Broken things often have such sharp edges. Wonderfully keen to cut and nick... _

The voice rises through my shattered consciousness like mist on standing water. Through me, with me, in me. I feel the soft sting of each syllable against my lips and cheeks.

_ Or rip and tear and suck and lick! _

Drip...

Drip...

Drip...

My stomach roils. I turn away, knowing I cannot shut out this voice, the voice of the Other. The sound of the soulless, mine/not mine, undead, unborn. Without a soul, my body is an empty vessel, a dark star hovering on a cusp of twilit horizon, teetering on the edge of space _ — _ what is there beyond it?

_ Embrace your edges, Angelina, each glittering shard, each shattered splinter... Remember, you made a deal... _

A deal, hastily brokered to save myself, now nothingness is my sole reward. Do I dare to embrace this nothingness, this life of endless night? I used to navigate by the stars, finding in every constellation a sure path to my destination, vocation, home. There used to be roads, so many roads, but I'm not sure how to find them anymore.

_ Feed me, Angelina—feed! _

I've lain here for three days, my room, cold and windowless. Three days, I've resisted. Rain trickles through cracks in the ceiling and wind screams through the iron vents at each cobwebbed peak. Darkness swarms around me, bears down upon me, then enters like a thief, its blackness so impenetrable, so deep, shadows flee and night itself fears its presence.

It came as things of its nature come, unbidden, usurping the form of an innocent. A child with flaxen hair and cat-green eyes.

Such a fool I was, believing faith alone could dispel such a tenebrous thing, shepherd a damaged soul back to the path of love and light. But light only touches what it illuminates; darkness has a much longer, stronger reach.

Drip...

Drip...

Drip...

I cannot starve it out or will it away, and when I raise a trembling hand, the only sign I am capable of making _ — _ down, up, right, left _ — _ mocks the Creator I once served so faithfully; and when I raise my voice in plea, in prayer, whisper only abominations.

“In nomine lucem resistis, magistri tenebris, canis et serpens, potestas in tenebris et fames et sanguine, pollutum duxerit, in societate spirituum—”

All hope is lost. All light will end.

"In nomin--in nomine patris lucem _ — _ "

_ You will never age, you will never ail, and you will never die. Embrace your descent, Sister Angelina. Cast off your veil, oh, Mistress of Night! _

Its hollow laughter wells within me. Fire rages in my throat. I throw back my head and scream.

A tooth, overlong, pierces my lip.

Drip...

Drip...

Lick...

Copper and oil and cloves and myrrh, tears and time and salt and ash. It is like water, like the finest wine, this elixir of life and I _ — _ I _ — _

I am the vessel of its deceit.

My word is my bond. I cannot break this pact.

_ Embrace your hunger, Angelina... _

I can no longer fight. I no longer want to. Why struggle, like a fly in the web, when I can become the spider?

  
  



End file.
